Wednesday, February 28, 2007

We are beginning to see why Google spent so much money buying a property that made almost nothing for over $1 Billion. For example, authors are streaming into (no pun intended) YouTube to tell you about their new books in person.

Here is a trailer for my sister's new novel, Swimming Lessons, due out in May, 2007. Her name is Mary Alice Monroe. Mary Alice has at least seven novels in print.Swimming Lessons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=558k1rYQ-vo

The first 5 people who contact me at wahmwed@yahoo.com will get a no-cost web page with their own, self-made, video on it.

I'd love to have you receive my weekly marketing newsletter. I provide solid, no BS, marketing information for people who work at home. If you sign up I will send you an interesting report called "17 Bible Foods That Heal" . It is 36 pages in length and chock full of wonderful information. Just send me an email telling me you have signed up and I will send you this report asap.Newsletter: http://www.wahmsearchengine.com/newsletter-signup.shtml

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Google Alerts can be one of your most valuable tools if you are a blogger or a website owner. Once you sign on, you will receive instant email notification when something happens in your niche or on any topic that interests you. Simply, you get alerts when you subscribe through Google's News, Blog or Groups programs.

To begin receiving the Google Alerts you just sign up at the Google Alerts home page. If you do not have a Google general account, you will need to set one up there. Then, you tell Google the TYPE of alert you are looking for (News, Blog or Groups). Then you click the "Create Alert" button. Google then starts the ball rolling when new items appear in its system. You can also tell Google how often to send the new results. (daily or "as it happens").

Pick a topic that reflects your blog or website. There is almost no limit to topics. More popular topics include news items, medical and technology advances, celebrity, entertainment and sports. You could even choose to monitor the activity of your competitors.

Once you get rolling you can tweak your results by asking for topics using different keywords. For example, if you are promoting recipes, you could ask for "pizza recipes" or "sauce recipes". Try more specific or more general keywords and watch the results.

Try Google's Advanced Search page to refine your results. If you find the result you are looking for there, copy and paste that result into the main search page.

If you find you have too many results coming into your email box, just delete a few. It's easy through the interface on the Google site.

You are allowed to make up to 10 Google Alerts at a time. But you can log out and come back immediately to enter more alerts. The maximum you can have is 1,000. Trust me, if you have over 100, you have too many going at once unless you can set up another email account for that purpose only.

You can refine your searches to pick up new and useful information from specific magazines like Time Magazine, for example. google source:time

Let's say you want to know when another blog links to your blog:link:gregcryns.com

To track your personal or business name, just put your name in quotes. i.e. "Tom Jones" or "Speedy Typos"

If you are working on a project or sector, use the quotes technique if you want a narrow search.

Be specific -- If you can use many words to describe what you are looking for, try it out. You could improve the relevance of the results. For example, if you want job descriptions in Chicago, use "Chicago legal jobs" instead of just "jobs" or even "law jobs".

I own a website about Chihuahua dogs. I am subscribed to Google Alerts to find interesting and often funny stories about that breed. When one pops throught that I like I just copy and paste the link into my website. I also own a website for "work at home" people. I look specifically for "work at home" because I know that is the most often used key phrase in my niche. I will often turn up interesting news about business start-ups and bankruptcies.

Are you concerned about plagiarism from your website? Copy a short and unique sentence from your story into Google Alerts. If that sentence is used, it should turn up quickly.

Be creative. For example, try "Uncle Sam" to find briefs for local and federal government cases.

Experiment. Try putting "Top 10" or "selling" into an alert. You might be surprised and enlightened by the results.

Remember, Google covers 5,000 news sources. You could put the names of your clients and friends into Google Alerts and be notified of an important event for them. This will help you become an unforgettable person in their lives.

Friday, February 23, 2007

The answer is difficult to articulate. It is a revolution in the way content is presented to people. The email lists are swiftly becoming dinosaurs. Struggling to get your website listed at the top of search engines is not quite as important as it used to be. The internet is dividing up into "tribes" who communicate amongst others in their own tribe or niche.

Example: Let's say you sell real estate. Before Web 2.0 you might have called or emailed a friend if you had a referral to pass on or a question to ask. Now you would probably join Active Rain.com .

If you love dogs you will probably love dogster.com or its sister site for cats, catster.com.

If you are Afro-American you may check in at BlackPlanet.com.

Australian teenager? Hit upBabbello.com

Looking for good music and video? Try Bolt.com

CarDomain.com is the largest website for auto enthusiasts with an audience of 1.6 million unique users per month.

Want to keep the planet green? Try Care2.com

Socceer enthusiast? Try Google's joga.com.

Want to talk with other moms? Mothersclick.com

Here are two videos that may help you understand what Web 2.0 is and where it is going and why it is important for you to grasp it if you are an internet marketer.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

1. Set up your own forum at Ryze.com 2. Set up a Lens at Squidoo.com (very worthwhile)3. Create MySpace, Yahoo, and MSN profiles 4. Use Instant Messaging for social networking5. Set up a BLOG! Promote it on Technorati.com6. Post comments on other blogs in your niche7. Gather email addresses and send a bi-weekly newsletter8. Write articles and post them in article directories.9. Use eBay- the world's largest store where all the people congregate10. Get a Google Adwords account and learn to use it for profit11. Promote your stuff at CraigsList12. Host an online party13. Make an RSS feed with your own articles14. How about a PodCast?15. Write an eBook and give it away for free with the link to your site in it16. Offer a free eCourse (eBook)17. Review (regularly) some products at Amazon18. Review products and post them at epionions.com19. Post a comment a day on your favorite business forum20. Post your business at Wikipedia for your own town21. Advertize in Ezines and on websites22. Create folders at backflip.com23. Make a video of yourself selling your product and post it at YouTube24. Contribute to Yahoo Answers25. Post your photos to Flickr.com26. Make a Post at Digg.com showing your website address

Generally, there are many ways to promote your blog or website at little or no cost unless you count your labor as "cost". Once you start to earn some big bucks you can then hire help at affordable outlays and do the things that you have learned to do to make you the most money.

For example, if you are blogging daily and you have a significant number of people in your blogging audience, it would be wise to have someone proofread your work for basic punctuation errors before you send it into the blog world. I think the idea of employing a virtual assistant is a no-brainer since they will usually work without demanding a minimum hours policy and you do not have to pay them expensive benefits.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

I have a high tolerance of spam email. That does not mean I like them. But I tolerate them probably because I know it is painful to try to eradicate them.

I've set up my Outlook Express to delete anything with the "V" word in it or the related "P" word. Do men get those ads more than women, I wonder? I have also filtered all email with the "F" word (that is the FREE word not the other nastier one, or is it?). These pesky emails are put into the delete folder immediately.

Strange things do happen in the email world though. My wife and I are both on the same Charter.net network. She often sends me email and amazingly it often goes directly into the "Junk" file. I told her that once and she gave me a dirtly look. I won't mention it again to her. Only to you.

A couple of developments are perking my antennae. I do not invest in the stock market at all. I wish I could, really, but I just don't have the cashola to do so since most of my funds go into my checking account. That's the one I also call my "retirement fund." So, why am I getting tons of email for stock market hot tips? Why do they think I might read their precious emails?

Here is something that is definitely bugging me about the new breed of email. A lot of it comes in a picture, probably a .jpg file or .gif file. I guess this is how they bypass the ISP spam protection. Actually, I might start using that myself to spam people I don't care much for.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not dead, but it is changing and not as absolutely crucial as it used to be. Early on, people used SEO to help drive their websites to high positions in search engines. The purpose was to exploit weaknesses in the algorithms of the existing major search engines (before Google arrived we depended on Yahoo, LookSmart, Excite and others).

There is much information out there about how to manipulate search engine results in today's market. For example, some people still hang on to the outmoded belief that META tags are important. Put that to bed, please. Some people think that using CSS will improve your ranking. Sorry to disappoint you. Since then, search engines have become very much more sophisticated. The search engines learned to close the doors on the tactics to crack into a high ranking. Some of those tacticsincluded spamming the META tags and image tags. Some sites would make the text color the same as the background color to add keywords that were totally unrelated to the website's information. Thus, we would often get a porn site, for example, when searching for a site about website creation.

There is much information out there about how to manipulate search engine results in today's market. For example, some people still hang on to the outmoded belief that META tags are important. Put that to bed, please. Some people think that using CSS will improve your ranking. Sorry to disappoint you.

We need to stop thinking about how to "manipulate" the search engines. Google employs scores of PhD's to outsmart us. Any newfangled technique will quickly get smothered. Mainly, you need good, fresh content to get found by people searchers.

Some SEO companies will solicit your business. They claim they can get you on the first page of Google. That get's you excited. But ask them this question: "What search term can you guarantee for me?" This will cause a lot of hemming and hawing on the other side of the line because the person knows he simply cannot guarantee anything, especially very generic search terms like "candle" and "marketing."

To get Google's attention, you need each and every page of your website to be very unique in content. Designis not as important for search engine results, but good navigation is veryessential. That is why Google love site maps - it's bots can easily find your content.

Incoming links

I'll go on record as saying that incoming links are very important to your web presence. But maybe not for the reason you think. Yes, latest intelligence shows that incoming links DO influence results but my experience says that they are not as important as they used to be. This is based on my experience of not seeking links over the past two years. I used to spend a greatdeal of my time begging for incoming links.

Don't belittle the power of well placed links from good sites, though. I still get plenty of traffic to my website from other good websites. People do check out the linksections, especially if they trust the owner of the website.

Keywords

Each page on your website should be focused on one major keyword. Having said that, I've learned that the search engines are getting so sophisticated that theycan evaluate related key phrases and give them significance.

For example, let's say your website is "How to make a good pizza." We used to target the single word "pizza" for optimization and forget other key phrases like "good pasta", "delicious pizzasauce", etc. I recommend a strong focus on a single key phrase (possiblea long-tail phrase) but interspersed with other, related key phrases.

Be sure to include your keywords or key phrases on your page. You don’t want to go overboard, but you will want your page title to be very descriptive.

There are a few good tools to find related keyword phrases:

1. Wordtracker - one of the earliest and the best

2. The Google Adwords KeywordTool is also worthy.

META Tags

At this time I find only two META tags to be useful:

1. The Title Tag - thatis what people will see when they do a search in a search engine

2. Description Tag -this will usually make up the text under the main text that they see in a search engine. A short description of the web page you are optimizing will be sufficient here. Using a couple of words from the Title tag is also recommended.

I learned early on that Google liked (loved?) the H1 tag for the title of your web page. I've seen at least one trusted and true expert say that you can scale down to an H2 or lower tag, but I don't have a problem maintaining the H1 tag since I am personally not overly concerned with the look of a page. So, if your website is about Internet Marketing, for example, and one of your inside pages is devoted to "Social Networking" then make sure that key phrase is surrounded by a nice, fat H1 tags.

My Recommendation

For the past year I've been recommending to my clients to spend their time learning about Google Adwords as the primary method to obtain targeted visitors to their websites, emphasison the word "targeted." This may sound strange coming from a guy who spends some of his time doing SEO for website owners.

Actually, once you understand the value of your time and the cost to hire people like me, I think you will gladly buckle down and learn how to use Adwords successfully. Just ask my friend, Alex. He sells a unique brand of European vitamins and other health products. I built his website one year ago and I warned him to not expect results quickly.

Rather than spending more time getting incoming links and other old-fashioned ways toimprove results that he go the Adwords route. I am happy to report that he is now selling over $7,000 a month from his site and that figure is rapidlyincreasing.http://www.westeggnaturalproducts.com

TIP: I take Adwords expert, Perry Marshall, seriously. His advice is to use Google Adwords as more of an email address collector than as a means to sell product. Think about this. If you get a 5% click-through rate on Adwords you will be congratulating yourself for choosing that advertising tool. That is, until you realize that you sell just one out of twenty visitors. You need to monetize the visitor presence by enticing him to give you his email address for, say, a free eBook or something else of value. Then you can probably improve your bottom line by learning to use your email list effective!

Overall, take care to be skeptical of all advice you see about SEO (and many other aspects of web marketing). Include the information on this page in your skepticism. Things are changing rapidly, almost by the hour.

Don't be transfixed by anything, including SEO and PR. There will always be a shiny new vehicle to take you for an exciting ride.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

The giant real estate industry is fighting a losing battle against a new breed of real estate sales people: the flat rate brokers.

Flat rate brokers will list your home for one low price, sometimes as low as $399. These agents usually set a up a contract with you where you agree to pay any agent 2.5% of the selling price at the time of the closing. Why? Because there is no incentive for agents to show your home without making some money. The 2.5% rate is the going rate around the country.

Let's assume that the best way to sell your home is through a Multiple Listing Service. Statistics kept by the real estate industry confirm this as a fact. Let's say you sell your home for $300,000. The full commission broker will often insist on a 6% sales commission. This means, of course, that the broker(s) will pocket $18,000 as their commission. Usually the selling broker gets half and the listing broker gets half. So, in this case, you would actually be selling your house for $282,000 (300,000 minus 18,000). This does not include legal, insurance and other fees associated with selling a house.

Flat rate brokers are betting that you will want to list with them to save a bundle of money. They work on listing volume rather than actual sales. This is not to say they do not have your best interest at heart because they know you will probably be purchasing another home. The chances of using your flat rate broker are enhanced if you sell your house through him or her.

Other myths are surfacing. Statistics show that the number of homes sold through "Open House" weekends is a dismal 2% and for newspaper ads a whopping 5%. Home guides sell 1%. The source for these National Association of Realtors 2006 Homebuyers and Sellers Profile (75 page report)

How much can you save? The result is an eye-opener.

Let's assume your flat rate broker charges you $500. (This is an up-front fee by the way) If you pay the selling broker 2.5% of the selling price ($7,500) and your flat fee broker $500, then it is easy to see that your total fees are $8,000. This is a savings of $10,000 on the transaction. I don't know about you, but for me this is more than chump change.

Full-commission brokers are attacking the flat rate brokers with good reason. They are cutting into their total industry commissions heavily. The standard brokers also see the writing on the wall because they, like you now, know the simple fact that most homes get sold by agents who knew nothing about your house before it was listed in the MLS. So, no matter how much huffing and puffing the full-commission brokers yell about how their service makes a difference, statistics prove otherwise.

I"ve sold a few homes that we lived in over the years and I will state without blushing that my listing agents were generally useless as far as selling my houses. They may have tried, but you could have fooled me. All four of my previous homes were sold by people who I never met before they showed the houses to their prospects.

Be aware that some flat rate brokers will provide you with as much or more service than the full service brokers. My good friend, Bill Brynelsen, lives in Spring Grove, Illinois. This is the next town over from my village of Richmond. Bill was a pioneer in the flat rate real estate business. He started his agency in 2004. At that time flat rate brokers were treated as hostile enemies by real estate salespeople and the public alike.

Times have changed. Bill provides signs and gives useful information to his clients during the selling process. He also attends the closings for moral support. That's more than being the nice guy he is. That's good business.